On 27/2/21 7:48 pm, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk
(via tml list) wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> We had (I think) a good session on Thursday celebrating our five year
> anniversary and 30th episode of The Traveller Adventure.  This
> morning's project is to write it up.  But in the interim, I've been
> thinking. Never a good idea.
>
> (I actually started this as questions about the Tradewar chapter but
> having just reread it *closely* for the first time in about 3 months,
> I realize they're pretty much answered... <sigh>)
>
> You may be aware that I've been using the What's Wrong With the Ship?
> d66 tables from CyborgPrime
> (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/249232/d66-Whats-Wrong-with-the-Ship-6-Pack-BUNDLE
> <https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/249232/d66-Whats-Wrong-with-the-Ship-6-Pack-BUNDLE>)
>
> There are six tables so I use them as a large d666 table.  And they
> give the engineer (and others sometimes) lots of work to do.  My house
> rules for using these are appended.
>
> However, I think I may have identified why I don't quite find them the
> panacea I'd hoped.  While I do like them to a) show the March Harrier
> is aging; b) life springs surprises on us - often at awkward times; c)
> spend *some* of the money the ship earns! , I'm not quite sure they
> offer much beyond die rolling especially if your engineer has
> superlative skills.  Unless you take a glitch and expand it to become
> a whole role playing thing.  Maybe I just need to be better at that.
>
> I think I need to work out a way to up the ante so that the crew have
> choices (or rather have to make choices) about what to fix and when
> and a pile of jobs to do for which there's never quite time.  So I
> think I need to do four things:
> - get the six d66 tables into a Word document rather than six
> PDFs/print outs so that they're more "usable" (e.g. copying them into
> Discord rather than typing out an entry each time!)
> - Travellerize the ones that are a bit marginal.  The tables are not
> Traveller specific and a few have jargon that's not very appropriate. 
> I might also consider removing some of the verbiage - although I quite
> like that in some ways.
> - many have cost of repairs already but check they all have Credit
> and/or time frames associated with each one so that it's easier to
> guide PCs to repairs
> - consider whether more of them need to be not just "engineering" but
> other ship systems that involve other characters - there are some and
> I think I'd like more (or at least just add stuff to what's there).
>
> I don't know if this helps anyone?
>
> Comments?
>
> (If I have one doubt about my rules below it would be the odds of
> needing a port/shipyard.  I've already reduced 'needs a repair yard'
> from "3-5" to "3-4".  Should it just be "3" and maybe 'needs to be
> done in port' an "11" only?)
>
>
>
>
> *Using the /What’s Wrong With the Ship?/ Tables*
>
> Timothy Collinson
>
> * *
>
> Roll an Average Engineering task once per week.  Failure means rolling
> on WWWtS? 1+D3 times.
>
> Increase difficulty level by one for every decade of ship age.  With
> all six tables roll d666 to determine problems.  (NB: Some need
> tweaking to make them Traveller appropriate.)
>
> For any task, roll 2D to determine severity of breakdown:
>
> 2 = needs an A-B class starport (or 1D weeks wait for part)
>
> 3-4 = needs a repair yard (A-C class starport)
>
> 5-9 = can be done in transit (if the task warrants, roll 1D: 1-2 = EVA
> required)
>
> 10-11 = needs to be done in port
>
> 12 = needs to be done in a repair facility with specialist engineer(s)
> or a 2D weeks wait for parts.  Adjust if task seems to demand it.
>
> For any task, roll 2D to determine difficulty of task to fix:
>
> 1 = Simple
>
> 2-3 = Easy
>
> 4-5 = Routine
>
> 6-7 = Average
>
> 8-9 = Difficult
>
> 10-11 = Very Difficult
>
> 12 = Formidable
>
> For any task, roll 1D to determine length of time of repair job:
>
> (DM+1 if Average; DM+2 if Difficult or harder.  Additional trained
> crew can reduce time)
>
> 1 = seconds of repair
>
> 2 = minutes of repair
>
> 3 = minutes of repair x 10
>
> 4 = hours of repair
>
> 5 = hours of repair x 10
>
> 6 = days of repair
>
>  
>
> The tables themselves, from CyborgPrime, can be found at:
>
> https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/249232/d66-Whats-Wrong-with-the-Ship-6-Pack-BUNDLE
> <https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/249232/d66-Whats-Wrong-with-the-Ship-6-Pack-BUNDLE>
>
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Collision,

I'll see what I can chuck in, to cause even more shenanigans for your
players.  Have they had a triple main power failure after lifting from a
downport yet?

Per GT: Far Trader p75, the daily maintenance demand scales as the
inverse square root of the relative purchase price.  A ship bought for
64% of new would divide maintenance demands by 80%, for 125% of the
as-new maintenance demand.

GT also assigns ships (and vehicles in general, iirc) an HT statistic,
"to reflect their general condition and resistance to wear, fatigue and
breakdowns" - scaling almost directly with the inverse of density.  Per
GT:FT p75, "HT = [75 x (internal spaces in dtons ) / (loaded mass in
stons)] + 5.", max HT being 12 or the ship's G3TL, whichver is greater. 
If purchase price was 10% or less of new, drop that calculated HT score
by 2.  Else if purchase price was 50% or less of new, drop that
calculated HT score by 1.

Perhaps give the IMV Dunger an END score (since that seems to be the
MGT2 analogue to GT's HT score) that you can then check against when the
PCs redline the drives for really far too long, barrel roll through a
gas giant turbulence layer, or bounce IMV Dunger off a berth.

I think you are correct in treating the Collision Strikes Back! tables
as role-playing hooks - during the Butcher's Paradise's most recent lift
from Procyon Down to Procyon Orbital (and the aforementioned three
separate main power failures), the first gravity failure had El Capitane
legging it for the coffee machine to contain and/or sop up the escaping
coffee before it got into something expensive.

Dare to be stupid - this isn't (hopefully) smuggling Ancient artefacts
into the Arden Cluster for sale to clarkers.

Perhaps something goes _sproing_ as a port doctor is coming aboard for
quarantine inspection - unless the PCs think very quick on their feet
(or they have to avoid some knucklehead making a dumb joke about a Vargr
doctor having "gone to the dogs" or the like), the dock-tah notices the
sproingage and reports it as a safety violation to the port (resulting
in denial of lift clearance until sorted out to the port's satisfaction).

Some sort of crud gets caught in the main drive vector-thrust gubbins,
somewhat constraining their previous post-stall maneouverability.
The contragrav books off for lunch during departure.
The captain's dunny backs up and thoroughly stinks her cabin out.
The big coffee machine in the crew's mess lets the magic smoke out,
thoroughly brassing off the crew -  full of caffeine addicts.

All of these could be reduced to a single roll (probably Mechanic, or
Engineer (whatever) ), but I submit that would be cheating your players.

Magic smoke escape on its own, for example, would be annoying - but what
if it's combined with their next port quarantining them?

Hope that's given you some ideas.

Alex